


Shelter

by Penknife



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hair Brushing, M/M, comfort after a nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28813389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: Bard suspects that there's no one touched by dragonfire who doesn't dream of it.
Relationships: Bard the Bowman/Thranduil
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	Shelter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WolffyLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolffyLuna/gifts).



Bard wakes when Thranduil sits up in bed with a strangled cry. It is late, he thinks, as hard as it is to judge time in these elven caverns. A single lamp sheds a dim golden glow across the furs.

Thranduil rests his forehead on his knees, his long silver hair streaming down his back, his body a bow of tension, each breath a shudder. The shadows are shifting crazily on Thranduil's face, where illusion usually hides the deep scars of dragonfire.

Bard sits up himself, and Thranduil holds up a hand to ward off touch. Bard makes himself wait, uncertain whether Thranduil will allow himself to be comforted. Eventually, after what looks like considerable inner struggle, Thranduil turns his hand enough to make the warding-off gesture into a beckoning one.

Bard needs no more invitation. He shifts over so that Thranduil can lean back against him, wrapping an arm around the man and taking his weight against his shoulder. Thranduil takes a steadier breath, and looks as if he is attempting to recover his dignity.

"I still dream of the dragon," Bard offers. "In the dreams, I always miss. Every shot I take, whether from my bow or from the wind lance—they all miss, and the dragon crashes down on us like a thunderbolt, and then there's nothing but fire."

He suspects that there's no one touched by dragonfire who doesn't dream of it, and he bears no scars on his own flesh, only a lingering aversion to the smell of fire and the reflection of torches in the lake's water.

He doesn't expect an answering confession, but after a while of leaning on his shoulder, Thranduil says, "In dreams, I cannot turn away from the fire. I stand useless as it burns away my—" He swallows hard in place of whatever else he might have said, his hands raised to his face like claws that might rake away his flesh.

Bard knows him well enough to know that if he sets his own hands on Thranduil's face now to comfort him, on either the smooth unbroken skin of his right cheek or the lacework ruin of his left, Thranduil will shudder under the touch and struggle to endure it. Instead, he strokes Thranduil's hair, and Thranduil shudders once, hard, and then relaxes back into the touch.

There are snarls beginning in the fine silken river of Thranduil's hair where he must have tossed and turned. "Is there a comb to hand?"

"There," Thranduil says with a jerk of his chin, and Bard casts about until he finds a boar-bristled hairbrush. He strokes it through Thranduil's hair, teasing apart the snarls, an old familiar intimacy that reminds him with a pang of doing the same for his wife, before her death. He never expected to be doing the same for the Elvenking, and much less for the Elvenking to be relaxing into his touch, his breathing slowing as Bard brushes out the long fall of his hair.

At last he sets down the hairbrush and slides down to make his shoulder into a pillow for Thranduil's head. Thranduil settles into the circle of Bard's arm and closes his eyes. Bard strokes back a straying strand of hair from Thranduil's temple, and Thranduil only turns his face appreciatively into the touch without opening his eyes.

This tenderness can't last. Very likely in the morning Thranduil will be defensive at having craved comfort and accepted it. Very likely he will be at great pains to appear cool and remote and unapproachable, the ancient and mysterious Elvenking, far beyond Bard's mere mortal understanding.

And he is all that, but he is also this, a weary man troubled by evil dreams, and sheltered from them for a little while in the circle of a lover's arm. Bard brushes a kiss at Thranduil's temple, and wraps an arm around his waist, wanting to be the best shelter that he can.


End file.
